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Rate and Review: Lard of the Dance

I saw this for the first time Today. It's okay, and that is it really. There's some funny moments, but at the end of it, I was thinking what was the point. Homer's eye sucking out and popping out was disgusting, and there were many other nasty pain gags in the subplot. Though Milhouse falling over at the begining was great. Characterizations were poor. Lisa wasn't very good, Homer was quite jerky and I didn't get Milhouse at all. We know how much he likes Lisa, but when asked for a date he rejects with a pathetic excuse. Marge was well characterized though. On the actuall plots, the main plot, had a nothing happend feel to it as I say. There was nothing really exciting or intresting that happened. The subplot whilst wacky and had its pain gags as stated above as well as poor Homer produced some good laughs and atleast it was fun in a silly way. Though I couldn't stand how they stressed Bart was missing school, I know they were making the point but still. The ending was a nice link in, wheather it be silly or not. And the actuall ending with the greace fight was a nice idea. C+

A decent, if definitely inferior, remake of "Lisa's Rival". In fact, I may have liked this episode better if it didn't nearly rehash both the main plot and sub-plot of the above episode. Here, instead of Allison bringing out Lisa's insecurities of fitting in, we have Alex, a mature student (did they ever say what grade she was in?) who makes Lisa feel like a baby. Like Allison, Alex is never malicious or even tries to make Lisa feel insecure. She invites Lisa to go shopping with her and even offers to pierce her ears. Unfortunately, nothing she does can help the fact that her mere presence makes Lisa feel inferior. I've heard people say that Lisa's characterization was poor. While it's true that she was a little too obsessed with how she was viewed by her peers, I think that it's kind of understandable. She is eight years old, after all, and even highly intelligent and independent people like herself want friends. I liked the fact that she wasn't a "mini-adult" like she sometimes can be. However, I do agree that her childishness and insecurities were exaggerated a bit too much. On the positive side, Alex was a good one-timer and Lisa Kudrow did a nice job voicing her. One of the problems with this part of the episode, in my opinion, was that it was too short. I would have liked to hear more from the other girls (Janey, Allison, Sherri and Terri) and I would have liked to see a deeper explanation for Lisa's preoccupation with being popular. It could have expanded on the ideas given in "Summer of 4 foot 2" and become a nice episode about character exploration.

Unfortunately, the sub-plot brings this episode down a lot. At least in "Lisa's Rival", Homer's sugar sub-plot was fairly amusing and didn't detract from the main plot, despite being a bit pointless. The grease sub-plot, on the other hand, just annoyed me and felt like a waste. I really disliked the scene of Homer and Willie fighting in air vents, mainly because I usually don't like action scenes in the Simpsons when they're not needed and this was no exception. I also didn't like Marge's characterization. I don't know, she seemed kind of a prototype to the "kooky Marge" character that we would see more of in Seasons 11 and 12 (and to a lesser extent, Seasons 13 and beyond). Bart was basically a non-entity, and Homer fluctuated between being decent and annoying.

Personally, I think both could've been improved, which is one reason I don't particularly like this episode. Both the main plot and the subplot have little going for it, coming across as a rehash, lard, or even rehashed lard. However, I do like how the two plots come together in the end, which makes me generous enough to give this episode 2/5 instead of the 1 it would've got otherwise. This would have been worse than any episode over the previous 9 seasons if not for the ending.

Bart: "Please don't call our parents!"
Chief: "I'm afraid I have to for hijinks like these. Hijinks - it's a funny word. Three dotted letters in a row."
Eddie: "Is it hyphenated?"
Chief: "It used to be, back in the good old days, you know. Of course, every generation hyphenates the way it wants to. Then there's *NSYNC! What the hell is that? Jump in any time there, Eddie, these are good topics."

Lard of the Dance is an episode which I cannot really enjoy. Lets add up the 'dodgy ep' elements: wasted guest appearance (lets face it, Alex was a bit of a teen stereotype and she wasn't very funny) - 'WTF' subplot (grease? what the?) - pretty unfunny characters - a wasteful main plot (half and hour for an abortive school dance?) and an oddly disturbing ending (where they throw grease at each other), along with gags and jokes that don't really fire nearly as often as they should. The only tangible message that I can attain from this episode is that 'Kids aren't Teens', which is pretty obvious in the first place. Admittedly, I do feel a bit sorry for Lisa here, as she is abandoned by her friends, however, her dressing up as an edgy prostitute was a bit over the top and soooo-not-Lisa-like. As in so many episodes, Marge appears and does nothing (the same can be said of Bart to a lesser extent). As a fellow commentator states, maybe they should have turned this episode into a character study on Lisa. It certainly would have rated better. As it is, however, Lard of the Dance is a wasted effort to me, with only a couple of redeeming qualities if that. Admittedly this episode is technically not a lot worse than Viva Ned Flanders, although that one can at least be seen as a guilty pleasure. I give Lard of the Dance a flat D.

Kids, let me tell you about another so-called ``wicked'' guy. He had long hair and some wild ideas. He didn't always do what other people thought was right. And that man's name was...
I forget. But the point is... I forget that, too. Marge, you know what I'm talking about. He used to drive that blue car?

this episode is very underrated. i thought it was funny when Homer is praying, just before they go and steal Groundskeeper Willie's retirement grease! and i also liked the fight between these two. defenitly worth to watch at least 3 times
5/5

One of the better season 10 episodes, a good and semi-fresh plot (while it does mirror Lisa's Rival in several ways, the main internal conflict within Lisa is different), and noticeably excellent pacing. However, there were a few things that made this episode imperfect. The Homer subplot seemed redundant and uninteresting. Skinner seemed very odd and out of character. And Lisa Kudrow did not do the best voiceover job for Alex.

A totally "meh" episode. It was easily one of Season 10's highlights, but it wasn't produced in Season 10, so that means nothing. If this were included in Season 9, it would most likely be my least favourite; simply because the whole plot bores me, even with it's mildly clever humour.

An average episode the main plot wasn't great and changed Lisa's charaterization a bit the sub plot worked well though with some good jokes.This was probably a case of one of the simpsons writing staff has an idea and forgets that they have already done it look at the similarities between the beginings of a Homer Alone and Marge in chains it is hard to come up with new ideas after so many years though as South Park showed in Simpsons already did it.